


anagnorisis

by renesaramis



Category: Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare, Shylock Is My Name - Howard Jacobson
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27012979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renesaramis/pseuds/renesaramis
Summary: anagnorisis/ˌanəɡˈnɒrɪsɪs/nounthe point in a play, novel, etc., in which a principal character recognises or discovers another character's true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances.Beatrice has a visitor of her own.
Relationships: Beatrice Strulovitch/Jessica
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	anagnorisis

**Author's Note:**

> Set several years post-Shylock Is My Name and follows the same concept.

Beatrice sees her first, outside Manchester’s Palace Theatre. She’s just finished watching the matinee of _Sunset Boulevard_ , one of the (many) subjects of her dissertation she’s writing for her final year at university. It’s going to be a discussion of love, she thinks as she exits the theatre – its wrongs and rights; all things presented in theatre; the taboo and the conventional …

It’s then that she sees her: Jessica, leant against a lamp post on the corner where Oxford Street turns onto the B6469, twirling that ever-so-infamous turquoise ring between her fingers. She’s wearing a crucifix, the one she must’ve been gifted when she married Lorenzo. Everything else, though, seems relatively modern in comparison: an off-white button-up paired with a long skirt, and a dark brown cardigan …

Beatrice finds herself staring.

She’s a student; she sees no shame in sexuality anymore, and besides, she’s had her fair share of experiences with women over the years. She’s played coy, and the years of genuine naivete have long passed her.

But still – she can’t help but stare at her, her feet rooted in the pavement, while Jessica pretends not to notice. She slips that ring back on her finger – the one Beatrice was taught she traded away. Or maybe she didn’t.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Maybe nothing matters in this moment except the way Beatrice is looking at Jessica, half-wondering, half-longing, eyes wide with questions. Maybe nothing matters in this moment except the way Jessica is looking at Beatrice, almost daring her to come closer, to ask the questions that are lying in wait on the tip of her tongue.

She asks all of them and yet none of them with nothing more than a look.

But Jessica takes initiative – as if what is about to happen _has_ to happen – and sidles up next to her, a façade of chirpiness, and asks her to dinner at Turtle Bay.

This is how Beatrice finds herself sat in a booth, unnoticeable amongst the teatime rush of the Caribbean restaurant, sipping a cocktail she doesn’t know the name of, unable to form any useful conversation, so she sips and watches Jessica fumble with the menu.

She wonders, just for a moment, whether Jessica is much older than she is. Gratan was, by far. But then again, she was only sixteen when she met Shylock, when she thought she was going to run off with the handsome footballer.

So perhaps, then, she is older than Jessica.

At that thought, she glances at her. She’s all dark hair in ringlets, bright-eyed and curious, the same kind of eighteen-year-old innocence she’s seen in the freshers before.

What does it matter, anyway?

She pushes her cocktail to the side and pulls the menu gently from Jessica’s hands. They didn’t come here to eat, after all. She knows this much, knows a ruse when she sees one.

‘What is it you want from me?’ she asks. Or, perhaps – ‘What is it you want me to show you?’

The LGBT society at university called Beatrice some sort of late bloomer; she didn’t realise she was bisexual until after she finished college, and even then she didn’t have any experience with the same sex … until Freshers’ Week, at which point she somehow managed to master the art of eating out a woman in a sticky Manchester nightclub toilet cubicle after four rounds of vodka and coke, and a number of shots she never quite remembered drinking.

So, if this is not about _her_ , then …

She reaches for Jessica across the table, cupping her cheek with one hand, pulling her in by the collar of her shirt with the other, and kisses her. Jessica startles for all but a moment – and Beatrice remembers her own moment, the shock, and then the realisation, that second where it all clicked together for her – but she leans in, closer than close, as if they are not two people but one, a reflection of the other’s self in each other’s faces.

This is not about what Beatrice needs, or wants. This is about what Jessica _needs_. It’s what she needs to understand herself, who she truly is.

Beatrice pulls away unwittingly, watching Jessica’s face turn to confusion, to disappointment. She almost asks why, but Beatrice shakes her head. There are things she needs to work out for herself, in her own time and at her own pace, and abandoning their drinks and having some sort of anxiously hurried sex in Beatrice’s poky student flat will only serve to panic Jessica.

Beatrice has seen it with the freshers, especially the repressed ones, the religious ones. They panic at the thought that they might not be the perfectly perfect heterosexual, cisgender people they always thought they were. Add Jewish girl from sixteenth-century Venice who ran away to convert to Christianity to marry a man to the equation and, well …

That’s even more to panic over.

‘I’ve been on this earth for nearly five-hundred years,’ says Jessica, quietly, as if she can read her mind. ‘I’ve come to terms with it now. Kissing men. Kissing women. Jews. Christians.’ She reaches absently for the crucifix around her neck. ‘But I thought you ought to know.’

She picks up the handbag she’s been cradling to her side. ‘I’ve been watching you,’ she confesses, ‘since my father told me about you.’

Beatrice stares at her, dumbfounded, for more than several beats, until she finally forces words from her mouth. ‘You speak to him?’

Jessica shakes her head, half-laughing. ‘Five hundred years is a long time to be angry. After so long, does running away really matter anymore? We had a lot of time to hate each other, and a lot of time to love each other.’

She stands up, picks up the bag and slings it over her shoulder. She rifles through her purse until she finds a twenty pound note and slides it across the table to Beatrice. ‘I have to go,’ she explains apologetically. ‘I’m sure I’ll find you later.’

Beatrice feels very small, swallowed whole by the booth, Jessica looking down to her now – how old is she, anyway?

But she leans down, invites Beatrice into another kiss, and this one feels so much more experienced; she pushes Beatrice’s chin up with her thumb, caressing her cheek with her fingers before she pulls away so abruptly that Beatrice bites her lip to stop herself from whining. It’s over too soon; it leaves her with so much more longing than she ever imagined. She wants to beg her not to go … but she’s realised too late that her innocent girl charade is nothing more than an act.

‘Thank you for the kiss,’ Jessica says, half a smirk on her face, and Beatrice sees it now; the girl who traded a ring for a monkey, stole her father’s money and made off across Venice in the dead of night.

She sees it now, here, as she leans back into the booth’s cushion, breathing in the last of her perfume before it dissipates. Sighing, Beatrice picks up the note.

There, on the back, in thick, black permanent marker, is a Magen David; and, beneath it, something in Hebrew. Beatrice’s isn’t very good anymore, not since she started performing and ended up spending more time at rehearsal instead of shul, and now she’s at university most of her assignments end up due on Friday nights …

But it clicks, later that night, when she’s on the phone to her dad, talking about her strange visitor (mostly omitting the kisses, for her own sake rather than her father’s).

Yiskah.

It’s a promise, of a sort. She’ll be back. On her own terms, of course – when has anything _not_ been on Jessica’s terms? – but she _will_ come back.

All Beatrice has to do is wait.


End file.
